Guest post by Christopher Horner, CEI.
Today, NOAA finally delivered thousands of pages (hard copy, oddly, despite our request for electronic copies) of additional records that had been withheld during the deliberations over what to produce for a thorough FOIA seeking records relating to the HS, Mann’s appointment, Menne/surface stations, M&M, Climategate and the like.
This is a request from two years ago that has produced thousands of pages of papers and emails (all of the good stuff among which, in an odd coincidence, having already been produced under Climategate) and was the last in a series of four requests in response to which NOAA claimed ‘no responsive records’, when actually referring to records which they possessed but which Susan Solomon had said were really IPCC records and therefore not agency records. The subsequent IG investigation uncovering this response given to others, which we challenged when given to us, affirmed that this claim was not appropriate.
After congressional interest was expressed, NOAA offered differing defenses to us and Congress, what with Congress being subject to certain arguments against release which are not applicable to FOIA (eg seeking to protect the integrity of the scientific review process…), and we being subject to certain FOIA arguments to which Congress is not vulnerable (pre-decisional and the like).
The cover letter and inventory of withheld records, which counsel has been working on for a year, is attached. I have yet to review it in detail; I also will go over the records this week. A very superficial pawing through of the records indicates they’re mostly “IPCC” docs (there are also some emails…remember, these are the docs over which NOAA’s counsel and review panel have been fighting for more than a year, over whether to redact or withhold), and makes one wonder what they were so insistent about. But, as they fought like the devil to keep these secret, there — as the old joke has it — must be a pony in there somewhere.
Here is the cover letter:
CEI_NOAA_Solomon_Memo_and_Withholdings-1 (PDF)
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Uhm…. my understanding of compliance law as it applies to the private sector for certain, and which I presume applies also to the public sector is that this isn’t legal.
Various evidentiary statutes require that any document provided for evidentiary purposes must retain itz original attributes. If the original document was electronically searchable, then what they provide to you must also be electronically searchable. If the original documetnt held meta data (for example, the meta deta in a Microsoft Word document will tell you if it has ever been sent by email) then what they provide you has to include that same meta data.
Unless those documents were created on a type writer or on a computer and printed but never saved, I believe that they have a legal obligation to provide you with electronic versions.
Two years, eh? Time enough for a thorough job of scamster editing. Absent a serial log-in/register, no-one would trust such grudging compliance for beans. The burden to prove this dogpile complete lies not on private-sector requesters, but wholly on NOAA’s arrogant, feckless, ill-tempered apparat. As “devoted public servants,” DIPS, these charlatans care for no-one’s interests but their own.
If the weather information were to collected and managed by a private concern there would be little left of the argument that it belongs to the public. Perhaps they would let you have what you want at $10 a page. Or $100.
Re ‘Pony’
‘Pony and Trap’ is Cockney rhyming slang for cr*p.
Crispin in Waterloo said:
August 21, 2012 at 8:57 pm
If the weather information were to collected and managed by a private concern there would be little left of the argument that it belongs to the public. Perhaps they would let you have what you want at $10 a page. Or $100.
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A bargain compared to what we are paying now – not just in money, but in damage being done to science and society.
One possible reason for paper may be to remove information. For years people have been pulling deleted information out of word documents for example. Also it removed electronic time stamps and some times audit trails on files etc. It is much safer to release paper versions.
Shifty bastards.
About a week ago I reported on the sale of old Tesla’s lab at Wardenclyffe in Shoreham, NY
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/15/fun-puzzle-name-these-official-stations/#comment-1058858
I am happy to report that according to latest information, the required sun of US $1.6million of which New York is contributing 850,000 in order to be restored as Tesla’s museum, has been achieved.
More info at: http://mashable.com/2012/08/22/the-oatmeal-tesla-museum/
It’s a known technique. I’ve used it myself.
The interesting stuff will be hidden and inter dispersed in the documents.
Sundance says:
August 21, 2012 at 3:40 pm
2 rears? Was this NOAA’s version of the rapid response team?
That’s where the steaming pile came from?
When I contacted NOAA with the thought of obtaining one or more pages of the weather records I authored some decades ago, I was informed after long long chasing of transffered telephone calls, it would cost something on the order of $40.00 per page to have them retrieved, copied, and mailed. So, a cost of $100 per page is not so far away from current reality at NOAA.
what was it? monkeys…….typewriters. my bad, that was shakespeare. maybe this was the first try!
NOAA must think everyone is stupid! either that or they think of themselves as clever, but neither is true.
Why would they not give out documents with email addresses/phone numbers? Do they think you are going to offer them a job ?
As another poster said, that information could have easily have been redacted either at source or by Christopher’s team before publication.
RomanM says:
August 21, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Running OCR on the document using Acrobat Professional can convert the pdf linked in the post to a searchable document.
I know companies that do this for a living – there was a huge amount of work transferring UK National Health Service files to indexed and searchable electronic copy.
Latimer Alder says:
August 21, 2012 at 10:54 pm
Awe, shucks, you beat me to it! 😉
For the Virginian Colonials: Dickie-dirt = shirt, daisey roots = boots, whistle & flute = suit, boat-race = face, apples & pairs = stairs, frog & toad = road, dog & bone = phone, borasic lint = skint (broke), rub-a-dub = pub, jam-jar = car, trouble & strife = wife (not much used these days), brown-bread = dead, telling pork(ies) pies = telling lies (rather appropriate in some sectors of Climate Science), butchers’ hook = look (hence, have a “butchers” at this, etc), plates ‘o meat = feet, mince-pies = eyes (clap your “minces” on this, etc). There are a lot, lot more that many of us use from time to time. There are many modern versions too & many double-ryming that goes on too 🙂
People who hide something, usually have something to hide!
Stop blaming Obama (or Bush or Clinton or the current President Who Does Not Belong To My Party) for a permanent characteristic of bureaucracies. Agencies have been frustrating the open exchange of information since the days of Hammurabi. That’s half of their job.
The other half is to exponentially increase their budget and workforce. And handling a request like this helps to increase their budget requirements. Horner didn’t pay for all this legal scholarship, we did.
Get a hundred folks to scan in a 20 pages a day using and use something like MSoft’s word to convert it to text. Even wikihow has examples. A couple more minutes a day to add an index entry with file links. Annoying but should be very doable given the effort to do all those surface stations. And, the UNIX folks can likely create some simple grep and pipe things to convert/auomate/extract.
Imho, it’s just the bureau nitters at work. Imagine a group of folks whose only objective is to NOT screw up and release anything that might be “priviate” or “restricted” or … Then put them in a room for a few years and even the Bysantines would be proud.
@Latimer Alder
“apples & pairs = stairs,”
Apples and PEARS, please!!
ntesdorf on August 21, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Congratulations! I am looking forward to the discovery of at least one needle in a haystack
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Go for it.
I find it amusing that you guys are convinced that there is this huge conspiracy between climate scientists. The obvious consequence of such a conspiracy of course would be a huge amount of email traffic to coordinate the supposed fakery. But there is no sign of that traffic in the nicked emails exposed by your favorite thing, namely climate gate.
Now you have a bunch FOAI emails and I am betting that again that you will find no evidence of the coordination required to maintain a conspiracy.
It’s pretty obvious you all know that because many of you are trying to lay down an escape route by claiming preemptively that no such evidence will be found due to its hypothetical removal.
I guess you all learned that trick when you where toddlers and had an invisible friend.
SanityP says:
August 21, 2012 at 3:50 pm
Probably the reason why it took them so long, the printing of all those documents.
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We’re still lucky – they could have copied them in handwriting…
LazyTeenager seems to forget that most of us grew up when coordinating stories involved picking up the telephone, not sending email.
LazyTeenager says:August 22, 2012 at 5:28 am
[…]
I find it amusing that you guys are convinced that there is this huge conspiracy between climate scientists.
I find it amusing that you are convinced we hold that ludicrous position. Still lazy after all these years…
“I have a problem with the fact that certain emails are going to be withheld due to personal information being in those emails. Surely FOIA could have released those emails with personal details ie: phone numbers blocked out ? ”
Those documents were “withheld in part”, I assume that means exactly what you suggest. Personal information was redacted, but the rest supplied.
Stupid Brat is once again displaying the cognition dysfunction of those who’s teachers were more interested in creating lefties then teaching kids how to use their brains. Listen kids, Marxism kills!
****
LazyTeenager says:
August 22, 2012 at 5:28 am
Go for it.
I find it amusing that you guys are convinced that there is this huge conspiracy between climate scientists.
****
Naive much, Lazy? It’s far worse than any conspiracy (which is done secretly, not in the open). It’s an entire culture. Duh…